The next-generation robust wireless intercom system

Axnes, a Norwegian technology company, is celebrating 30 years since it was founded in 1995. Its Polycon Next Generation (PNG) WICS is now used on over 2,500 aircraft around the world, as well as on at least five of the aircraft at the VERTICON 2025 event in Dallas, Texas.

WIRELESS

A truly wireless system allows freedom of movement, no entanglement and not being anchored in one place, Frühwirth explained: “Wherever you have a loud environment, a loud harsh environment, where you have crewmen moving around for whatever reason who cannot be connected with a wire to an intercom system, we do this with a wireless extension, adding a lot of additional features.”

BETTER THAN NOISE CANCELLING

One of the features that Axnes boasts of its products is the adaptive noise cancelling. This is different and better than the active noise cancelling found on most headsets. Frühwirth described how the technology benefits operators working in noisy situations where mission-critical information needs to be conveyed clearly and precisely: “We have noise cancelling on the microphone. All modern headsets are active noise reduction headsets but that doesn’t work [in many situations] because imagine you’re standing outside under the rotor blades of the helicopter. If you get the noise of the rotor on the microphone into the intercom, the noise cancelling doesn’t help because it’s not an ambient noise anymore, it’s the noise coming from through the microphone. So that’s why our system is so different, because we developed an algorithm which can detect on the microphone the signal coming from the microphone. Our algorithm can detect what is noise and what is voice, and only the voice will be processed and the noise will be ignored.”

MORE THAN VOICE

The PNG is truly next generation: as well as intercom services, it also has location and position data transmission capabilities.Frühwirth explained how this helps in special missions when crew are outside the aircraft but need assistance: “Our handsets have a GPS, so we can transmit on an encrypted data channel. All our communication is encrypted, so under this channel, we also provide the position from the deployed crewmen to the aircraft. You can see where a crewman is on a mission computer, and you can even automatically slave, for example, a forward-looking infrared (FLIR) camera or searchlight to the external crewman. If you have a rescue swimmer in the water, at night, you can put the light spot always over the crewman so he can see better.

ROBUST RANGE

Another area that Axnes excels at is the range of its handsets from the craft. Having untethered technical crew is not as helpful as it could be if the handsets don’t work in situations where operational parameters require the aircraft to move away from direct proximity of a rescue, for instance. Frühwirth described the ability of the PNG WICS to work over a longer distance and how the system maintained its output safely: “What’s also bringing us ahead of our competition is that we have what we always call a robust range. Normally, what is the range you need outside of a helicopter? It’s a little bit more than the length of the rope. That’s a theoretical approach, but in 63 practicality, it’s totally different. What you do if you drop a guy on the ground and he’s with the victim and it’s not good for the helicopter to hover there for whatever reason, they can fly patterns around. That’s why we designed a system which has robust range, typically 3–5 miles. So it gives you the ability to fly around or even be a little bit away so that that the noise or downwash isn’t there and you still have a comm link to the aircraft.” He continued: “That’s also giving you mission safety because if you have a 500-meter range and ideal conditions, it’s really only a 150-meter range in bad conditions such as heavy snow or heavy rain, or you are somewhere between rocks. That’s why range is an important topic.”

Getting this result from the system is not as simple as just increasing the power, explained Frühwirth: “If you look a little bit deeper into these missions, it’s important and the tricky thing is because everybody says for higher range just increase the power. But we are limited to very low output power and the reason is because our handsets are used very close to the hoists. And these hoists, they have pyrotechnic cable cutting. So if you bring radio power too close to this cable cutter, although they are shielded and everything, but if there is some problem with the cable or whatever you could ignite with a radio signal, which isn’t cool and you’re hanging on the cable. That’s why range isn’t an easy topic. It’s a very tricky thing because you have special antennas with high antenna gain. You have to have very, very sensitive receivers to get this range with very little output power.”

THE FUTURE OF COMMUNICATIONS

Axnes is a European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) qualified company with Part 21 Production Organisation and Part 145 Maintenance Organisation approvals. Frühwirth said that this gives confidence to its clients to know that it is capable of producing aviation-grade equipment and is able to supply it when needed: “We are a full aviation qualified company and we provide our equipment fully aviation certified to the industry. That comes also with a lot of constraints; for example, we have agreements with Airbus, Leonardo and Bell that we support our equipment for at least 15 years after they deliver the last aircraft with our equipment. Which is quite a significant commitment to the industry. We can do that because we control the supply chain; we don’t produce anything in China, we control the full supply chain. It could be that there is an electronic component not available anymore tomorrow, but then we’ll modify to a new electronic component. That’s so important because we want to be a really reliable partner to the industry and you can see that our previous product, the Polycon, is still in use with a lot of operators worldwide, and we still support this.”